About
Hi, I'm Candace.
I came to this work through conflict. Professionally speaking.
I certified in mediation and spent years assisting attorneys with premediation: couples writing separation contracts, families contesting wills, siblings dividing property or dissolving the family business. Rooms full of people who loved each other and could no longer hear each other.
Then I found the Enneagram, and those rooms changed. Once I could see why each person's position made sense from the inside, I could help them see it too, and conversations that had been stuck for years started to move. I've been building on that discovery ever since: as a counselor and coach with individuals, and as a trainer with companies and teams.
Different rooms, same moment. The moment someone stops being baffling and starts making sense.
And the company work isn't secondhand. My husband and I have started, run, and sold businesses of our own. I'm not bringing theory into someone else's world. I'm back in mine.
What it's like to work with me
I'm warm, and I'm direct, and I've never found those to be in conflict.
I will tell you the truth kindly. I won't perform neutrality when I see something clearly, and I won't pretend to see clearly when I don't. I ask real questions, and I can sit with real answers, including the messy ones, especially the messy ones.
I've never been very interested in deciding whether people are right or wrong. I've always been far more interested in understanding why what they're doing makes so much sense to them. That's where the change is, and it's a calmer, more honest place to work from than judgment ever was.
And I'm practical. Insight that doesn't change your Tuesday isn't finished yet. Whether I'm working with one person or a leadership team, the work isn't done when it's understood. It's done when it holds.
Training and background
I work as a counselor and coach rather than a licensed therapist. That's an intentional choice: it lets me work with clients across state lines, and to blend therapeutic depth with practical, real-world application.
My background includes graduate training in Mediation and Conflict Resolution Counseling through the University of Utah, undergraduate studies in psychology at Utah State University, and certifications in Internal Family Systems, Coherence Therapy, and the Enneagram, along with additional training in trauma-informed care and Compassionate Inquiry. On the organizational side, I've spent years facilitating communication and leadership development across healthcare, insurance, technology, real estate, and HR, while guest-lecturing for graduate students in Utah State University's HR program and building the training programs, booklets, and materials that support this work.
The short version of me
I've been married for nearly three decades, and we've raised four children, so most of what I know about people was tested at my own kitchen table long before it showed up in my office.
I came to this work in the middle of my life, not the beginning of it, and I think that's part of why it works. I've lived long enough to know how hard it is to be a person, how long a pattern can run before anyone names it, and how much courage it takes to look honestly at your own life. I don't sit across from people as someone who has it all figured out. I sit there as someone who knows the way through, because I've walked it with hundreds of people, and because I'm a person too, still practicing what I teach.